Thursday, November 06, 2008

I was thinking about the fact that new paladins don't need to do the Charger questline any more. Instead, they can learn the Charger spell at level 61. I completely understand why Blizzard is doing this, as it's pretty hard to get a group at level 60 to do the instances. And yet, it seems a little bit sad. Getting a charger was a rite of passage for a paladin in the old days.

I was thinking of a reward to encourage paladins to do the Charger questline anyways, and it occurred to me that it would make a good Achievement. And then I thought we could take it a little further. What if there was an Achievement for each class, with the reward being a title, and each Achievement required a whole bunch of requirements that really represented the class as a whole. And of course, completing the Achievement nets you a very nice class-specific title.

For example, for the Alliance Paladins, I would have requirements like :

Clear all the 5-man dungeons which involve the Scourge (including Razorfen Downs!)

Completing this Achievement would be a good way of handing out a title like "Knight of the Silver Hand" or "Blood Knight" for the Blood Elves. (Obviously the Blood Elves would have a few different quests than Alliance.)

You could do something similar for all classes. For warlocks, you could require the charger questline, the various demon questlines (including the infernal and doomguard). Druids would require Cenarion Circle and Cenarion Expedition rep. I wouldn't require anything from raids or heroics though, which is kind of sad as it rules out Benediction and and Rhok'delar for priests and hunters. But I think this achievement would be something that would interest a lot of casual players, and should be involved, but accessible.

Heh, I'll issue a challenge to the other classes to list what would be a good set of requirements for their class (either in the comments, or on your own site).

Bleh, it's only 2 weeks since I completed the quest line (blood elf). The problem wasn't really to get a group for Stratholme, I had bored guildies to do that. But getting some of the mats was hard since people don't really farm or make them anymore. Still, I got the tabard too, something I guess a trainer won't teach you:)

As for other class achievements I'd say a minimum requirement would be to do all the class specific quests (unless they involve heroics or raids).

Yea, just what we need, yet another artificial mechanic to separate the 'real' people of a class from the FotM rerolls. No, that's not sarcastic. Doing so much just for a title seems like it would appeal to two people: achievement obsessives and people who remember that this is a RPG and try to develop their characters through lore as well as gear.

It would be nice to see this integrated into the raids. Priests and hunters have their obvious part. Druids could have something added in AQ, perhaps a new boss. Shamans in ZG. Rogues could do something with Ravenholdt in BWL. Mages and warlocks could have some sort of test, a trial of accepting or rejecting demonic power, going in opposite directions, though I have no idea where to place it. Warriors, paladins, and death knights could do something in Naxxramas, the old one (oh wait...), since these are all around level 60.

It would be cool to have quest chains dedicated to particular classes to really show their identity.

Mage:* Complete the level 50 mage quest.* Complete other mage speific quests.* Gain exalted with Kirin Tor.* Complete the Nexus.* Complete the Occulus.* Complete questlines having to do with fighting the Blue Flight. (Specifically in Coldarra, but in other places too, like Azhara).* Cast Polymorph on X Players/Enemies. (depending on if we want this to be PvP or PvE achievement).

Arguably there's also the Violet Hold, and the Eye of Eternity, two raid instances that are related to the Kirin Tor and it's fight against the Blue Flight, plus getting Exalted with Violet Eye, but since those all rely on raiding, it may be iffy.

Snarkiness aside, figuring out an epic mage task is hard. The class quests have nothing mage-specific in them. Fetch X, kill Y. There's no need to balance between damage types, and we even get class quests from warlocks.

Although.. Something like a solo Emperor Thaurissan run would be interesting. Go Invisible to get past sentries, survive the river of lava, AOE the Lycaeum, kite the golem to death and finally keep the Princess sheeped while killing the Emperor.

A really nice idea which I would love to see implemented. I think there could be something done for every class ... it was said before that every class was supposed to get an epic quest line somewhere.

There are a couple of faction related titles that lend themselves to classes already (the 2 Argent Factions or the 2 Cenarion Factions come to mind) - adding some more class specific Achievements into an even more specific title would be so neat ... I would probably only do this for my main but I guess that's the point, right?

What a great idea, but Blizzard seems to be a bit down on providing class specific quests - probably for the good reason that it wants to concentrate it's resources on creating content that's playable by virtually all of it's players - which is hard to fault.

Funny though, that other and forthcoming MMOs such as WAR and SW: The Old Republic seem to be focusing on the differences between classes much more and with Star Wars even providing whole story arcs that are class specific.

What a fun idea though, but I have to admit that my level 66 pala is pretty glad not to have to do this (though I was looking forward to running Strat at 70+ solo as prot tho!)

Well, there is more stuff for Rogues:- Exalted with Ravenholdt- Stealthrun: Kill all bosses in "insert instance" without killing any trash.- Pickpocket xxx amount of junkboxes- Open xxx lockboxes- Kill an enemy player of the same level while keeping him stunlocked the whole fight.- Ambush 1000 critters : p

Pallies benefited from a change that had to be made for druids - Flight form is pointless if there's no way to get access to the epic version, and somehow this stretched to include Warlocks and Pallies.

I believe that Blizzard's claim was that they don't yet have the tech for class-specific achievements (along with faction- and profession-specific ones). I do hope they implement them, but there are some issues to be worked out before that can happen. (For example, is it appropriate to include raid content?)

I like the idea :) I am planning to get most of that on my paladin anyway because of lore reasons, and was also kind of sad that it was no longer needed, I liked the Charger quest line. Although it got kind of a chore after running it for the umpteenth time for guildies ;-)

They should have just adjusted the encounter so it could be solo'd now, and didn't require quite as many mats. Every pala should have to go into scholomance to fight the undead at least once imo. Actually, come to think of it...isn't it pretty much solo-able now? I mean, I blew through stratholme the other day no problem....seems like scholo would be a walk in the park.

I had already completed the horde quest chain right up to the part where you have to burn the alonsus chapel when Blizzard dropped the new patch in, so I got a guildie to help me finish it off.

I would like to be able to say that I would have done the chain anyway for the bloodkight tabard, but I honestly cant.

At the same time Im dissappointed that Blizzard has made the charger available from the trainer.

Maybe the answer is not to bypass the quests altogether but to update the chain to include group quests or ramparts rather than instances nobody runs anymore. Not sure how that would work from a lore point of view but bleh its friday and im tired.

Eh. Most of the achievements listed are already in the game, wrapped up in other achievements. Considering that achievements are supposed to be comparable, also, this sounds like a lot of work for not a lot of benefit.

Also was thinking, Rohan. If you're going to have class specific achievements, why not race specific ones too? Like for Humans:

*Use "Every Man For Himself" X amount of times to remove a movement impairing effect*Exalted with Stormwind*Complete the Audience with the King quest (the long questline that you take out the Defias group).*Maybe some other quest that assists a major group of Humans, like the quests from Arathi Refugee.

Also there would be a flexible one based upon your class. Warriors, Paladins, Death Knights and Rogues would need to get 400 in Maces and Swords (1H and 2H for every class but Rogues), while Priests, Mages and Warlocks would need to get over a certain amount of Spirit. This would tie into the Weapon Expertise racial or the Human Spirit racial.

For this you would get a title like "Paragon of Humanity".

Every race could have a version. Plus this would give some fun stuff to do, like there could be an Undead Achievement called "Tasty!" which involved using Cannibalism a certain amount of times.

I really like this idea, but whatever happens it should not include any of the Sunken Temple class quests. That place takes WAY too long to do, and the rewards were generally worthless anyway.

I think your idea for the Pally list is pretty good. I never made Verrigan's Fist because it called for going to a bunch of instances that no one ever does (I still have no idea where Shadowfang Keep is, and I have 2 70s XD). But I did do the charger quest, and I'd craft VF or anything else that you suggested.

One thing that interests me: You can only show one title, so wouldn't most people only want to show the most presitgious one? I'm very proud of my Champion of the Naaru title, although obviously it wasn't super hard to get it sometime before 3.0. I can't imagine wanting to show The Argent Champion rather than that, because TAC seems less impressive due to the simpler requirements.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with titles in WotLK. I hope there's some really good stuff. I think I've been obsessed with titles ever since they ganked PvP titles with my Paladin stuck as a Private. Once I found out about Champion of the Naaru, I was all over it. Wish I could have been Sergeant, or pretty much anything better than Private...

Hopefully there will be some cool titles in WotLK that accompany an epic questline that takes you into a number of raid dungeons. It seems like they are making lots of easy titles, so I hope they make something that denotes real accomplishment. My Shaman needs one, for one thing.

Kind of funny: I don't care about Achievements at all, but I love titles - both because the whole idea of a title is awesome, and the way it's out there for everyone to see.

Verigans fist only requires two instances and its an awesome weapon at level 21 so I just did it for the 3rd time on my newest baby pally. For anyone who cares look for pallies to help you with the sfk run and vc run. Once you get there it only takes about 5 mins in SFK and 10 mins in VC to get the quest items and pallies usually got help themselves. I know I am always willing to help young Paladins complete that quest.

I like the idea of the achievement but it is a royal pain to get a group to do that quest plus they killed the drop rate of arcanite but yes it is and accomplishment to have done the quest. Kind of like all the other things that used to be "when WOW began". PVPr's have had the same complaint since they got rid of titles about Blizzard giving away epics for nothing.

I would LOVE to see there be class specific achievements including titles. I have been having an argument with a guildmember over them needing to be "fair" though.

Why does a Death Knight need to have the same number of achievments as a class thats been around since day 1? The short answer is they do not.

The same goes for a Paladin. If they did what you propose, why does a Mage have to get a similar achievement? Short answer: They do not.

There are a few classes that have had the pleasure of having lore based questlines for their class. All of these questlines should be achievements. Everything from Benediction, Rhok, Charger, to the Warlock's Demonsteed should get an achievement. The more difficult and challenging should get a title.

A really look forward to the stupid class specifics we WILL get though. "Bubble Hearth", "All HoPped Up!" I just hope there will be some difficult ones that you may just take time and luck to get.